This season of "Justified" has been so uneven that I spent a few minutes leaning back after watching "The Toll," wondering if familiarity was breeding my contempt.

With only one season (and two episodes this year) left, after years spent watching Raylan and Boyd supposedly grow and change, here I was following the Marshal through a stare down that sure seemed like a precursor to a showdown with another backwater thug in his office, watching Boyd explode his way out of a problem. These seemed like the kind of resolutions we were expected to accept way way back in Season 1.

I often approach "Justified" under the assumption that it's a show about two men trying to validate why they are who they are, why they act how they act, when they could be something better. After watching the "The Toll," I was ready to pen a review griping about lazy writing, about the show cycling back to some of Raylan and Boyd's most primal urges despite all the time elapsed between the pilot and now.

But "The Toll" isn't lazy. It's one of the series' smarter episodes when you give it a second to breathe, a sad commentary on how the question has changed. This show isn't about a struggle for two men acting one way when they want to be another. It's a show about two men who simply might be incapable of change.

Before I get into what I saw as the deeper portions of this episode, let me be frank: this episode was going to work on face value alone. The emotional resonance of Art's shooting, and the effect it had on not just Raylan but Tim and Rachel, brought back some of the tension and investment that has been lacking through this season's disconnected story arcs and the general malaise brought on by the Crowes. Art is largely considered the most likable and redeemable character on "Justified," and the hunt for the man who almost killed him was going to be compelling TV no matter what.

But what really clicked for me here was the idea that Raylan and Boyd are just stuck in who they are. To borrow from a certain other crime drama, this episode marked both men experiencing Rustin Cohle's theory that "time is a flat circle." The attack on Art and the subsequent aftermath call back to a lot of past events in the "Justified" universe.

First off, Raylan's nemesis creates a situation where a friend and fellow lawman is shot after the Marshal failed to put him away (the Quarles-Arlo-Brannigan situation of season 3 vs. the Crowes/Art throw down now). This shooting was also the result of Raylan's obsession with said criminal leading someone to toss a bullet in the direction of his lover (Boyd-Ava in Season 1 and the Detroit Mob-Winona situations certainly ring a bell). And I can't be the only one who some similarities between Darryl and Raylan trading death stares in the Marshal's office lobby and Boyd and Raylan's "24 hours to get out of town" confrontation back in the pilot (or more specifically, back in the pages of the Elmore Leonard short story that inspired the pilot).

More than any other episode in the series, "The Toll" exemplified for me that Raylan is just Raylan, no matter who else he has tried to be. Halfway through this episode he seems to step back, wanting to take down Darryl by the book because that's what Art would have wanted. But after the elder Crowe uses Kendall as a shield to escape prosecution (kind of the same way Boyd used Arlo to cover his ass back in the Season 3 finale, if you need more proof of history repeating itself), Raylan's back to "shoot on sight" mode. He doesn't want to arrest Darryl, he wants to punish, if not end, the Floridian gangster.

While it's less pronounced, Boyd ends up in a similar cycle. We've seen Boyd try and try to rise up to the rarefied air of Harlan's criminal aristocracy, but be dismissed as a common thug by people like Lee Paxton, Nicky Augustin and others in the past. Here, he seems to have found a sensei in Wynn Duffy, but with the missing heroin shipment, also finds his back against a wall.

I don't know if Boyd truly realized he was in a situation he could talk his way out of with the "assessment" in front of Wynn's ex-wife with Picker, or that he was winning that contest. But even when finesse is working for him, finesse is not something Boyd Crowder has time for, or wants to have time for, deep in his soul. Emulex and C4 and all other manner of explosive have served him well over time, and when push comes to shove, he's always going to revert back to a Kentucky thug even if he wants to be Kentucky's kingpin.

The character swings, coupled with the possibility that Art could die at any minute and the tension wrought in both of Boyd's closed-door meetings with Wynn and Picker made this one of the more enjoyable "Justified" episodes of the season. It moved well, it didn't get lost in the overabundance of plot and odd pacing that has dominated the season, and most importantly, it relegated the Crowes to a role they couldn't screw up.

Two episodes to go, and my faith is (somewhat) restored.

RANDOM MUSINGS:

• Maybe this was always the plan for Darryl, or maybe it was a course correct. But after failing to turn the elder Crowe into a semi-complex villain, or at the very least, a lesser version of Boyd, the show has found a comfortable role for him. He's not too slick, he's not cool, Michael Rappaport's performance has been ho-hum and he's not really much of a physical threat to Raylan. Aside from whupping on Boyd's neo-nazi associate, all we've seen Darryl do is beat on his sister and spray a bunch of bullets at Art, dropping him with a lucky shot. But that shooting is enough to make him an effective Raylan villain for the short term. He shot Art. He's got to pay for it. We can invest in that.

• For all the good this episode did it had two significant misses. Rachel's ascension to chief deputy should have been a great moment for one of the series' most under appreciated characters. The Rachel-Raylan dynamic will be interesting these next two weeks and next year. But Rachel has spent so little time on screen this season that the moment didn't feel all that earned in "The Toll."

• Miss #2? Ava's story, the source of much complaining among fans, finally failed me tonight. With her walling off Boyd, the prison storyline is now completely disconnected from the main narrative. I'm sure this is me looking at the parts instead of the whole, but for now, I could care less about Judith's former disciples giving up their ice cream.

• Danny Crowe is still dead, cool! But this episode had no room for Dewey. Obviously a lot going on this week, so I can respect the move, but I'm curious where he scurried off too after betraying his kin last episode.

• Adios Mr. Picker (John Kepalos). I guess it was time for him to go with an already crowded field of villains, but I always appreciated the veteran character actor's presence on my screen.